This is the story of an award presented to Peace Foundation
Melanesia (Bougainville) by Prison Fellowship International for its work
in fostering restorative justice in their communities.

In the past forty years the Western world has experienced a body of
reformers who have made efforts to introduce Restorative Justice to a
judicial system which no longer provides true justice. Restorative
justice deals with crime by meeting the needs of victim, offender and
community rather than by the letter of the law, retributive justice and
prisons. The Restorative Justice process continues to gain popularity
and official acceptance in almost every country in the world.

During the ten year civil war in Bougainville, people returned to
the ancient process of Custom law, which aims at restoration of the
victim, reform of the offender and the opportunity for the community to
be involved in its own justice. In essence, the only difference between
Custom law and Restorative Justice is the customary twist of attitudes
and values of the two groups.

During the civil war, Peace Foundation Melanesia was invited by the
Interim Government of Bougainville to train people in conflict
resolution skills. Instead of introducing something new and different
the field officer chose to work with those already using custom law.
Practitioners already knew the process of restorative justice (custom
law). What remained to be done was to confirm the details of the
processes, and prepare it as a course for training in the villages. This
training in the ancient customs was welcomed and applied by the people
of Bougainville and even today, it is still the preferred approach in
dealing with conflicts.

Prison Fellowship International is a body comprising thousands of
volunteers, world wide. Their mission is the following of Jesus Christ,
his teachings and his ideals of restorative justice, and to carry this
work to prisoners, victims and families damaged by crime. Every three
years it presents awards to individuals and groups who have made a major
contribution in the field of Restorative Justice. This year, 2007, Peace
Foundation Bougainville was the chosen group because of its dedication
to Restorative Justice. As stated in the award, it is a body which has
built on its own justice traditions, it operates at the level of the
grass roots and proved itself sustainable for the past fourteen years

This report offers an insight into one means of promoting justice
and reconciliation. Restorative Justice is particularly suited to the
cultures of Papua New Guinea (PNG) and has been successfully employed in
and after the Bougainville crisis of 1988-1998 This article reports on
one aspect of international recognition that the PNG Restorative Justice
process has received. The Prison Fellowship International Conference of
2007 awarded the Peace Foundation Melanesia (Bougainville) its award for
restorative justice.

Prison Fellowship International

Prison Fellowship International has a vision to be a reconciling
community of restoration for all those involved in and affected by
crime, thereby proclaiming and demonstrating the redemptive power and
transforming love of Jesus Christ for all people
(www.prisonfellowship.org). It is open to all who believe in the
orthodox truths of Christianity as historically proclaimed by the church
in the Apostle's Creed and the Nicene Creed.

The founder of Prison Fellowship chose to open the Fellowship to
all Christian churches and sects to avoid bickering which could only
tear the seamless body of the Church and cause a scandal to the very
people for whom the Fellowship was intended. At the time his decision
was a very controversial one and accusations of heresy and watering down
the faith were common. Now the unity embedded in the decision is worn as
a badge of honour.

The mission of Prison Fellowship is to exhort and serve the Body of
Christ in prisons and in the community in its ministry to prisoners,
ex-prisoners, victims of crime and their families; and in its
advancement of biblical standards of justice in the criminal justice
system (www.prisonfellowship.org).

It is the world's largest and most extensive criminal justice
ministry, with a global association of over 100 national Prison
Fellowship organisations. It is active in every region of the world with
a network of more than 100,000 volunteers worldwide working for the
spiritual, moral, social and physical well-being of prisoners,
ex-prisoners, their families and victims of crime
(www.prisonfellowship.org).

A further purpose of the movement is to reform criminal justice
around the world by expanding the use of restorative justice. Prison
Fellowship does this by supporting the efforts of governments,
intergovernmental organisations, non-government organizations (NGOs),
and the broader Restorative Justice movement. (1)

The award to Peace Foundation Melanesia (Bougainville)

At its convention that is held every four years, Prison Fellowship
grants a number of awards to people and groups who further the work of
extending the use of Restorative Justice

In line with its policy of encouraging NGOs in restorative justice,
Prison Fellowship International, on the advice of Professor John
Braithwaite (Law Program Research School of Social Science, Australian
National University) selected Peace Foundation Melanesia (Bougainville)
from a list of nineteen NGOs for its work in spreading restorative
justice.

Development of justice

The justice system accepted in most of the world today is
relatively recent in terms of world history. What is particularly
different in the ancient legal system was that the offence was
considered principally as a violation against the victim and the
victim's family. The community also had an interest and
responsibility in seeing that the wrong was addressed and the offender
punished but in the law as it is today the offence is considered
primarily as an offence against the state (Van Ness, 1986, p.64).

Ancient law from the time of the first written documents (Code of
Hammurabi 1700 BCE) focused on the victim and the right of the victim to
restitution; the Old Testament Law insisted that the victim be repaid;
Roman law required compensation for the victim and double the value of
the goods stolen; among the German and the Anglo-Saxons tribes there
were compensations and restitution for the victim, even for murder (Van
Ness, 1986, p.65). Generally the purpose of law was to avoid blood
vengeance, suppress crime, penalise illegal behaviour and bring the
relations of the disputants back into balance so that life could resume
its normal course (Van Ness, 1986, p.223).

Rise of state law

The Norman Conquest marked the beginning of the end of the
victim/community centred approach. When William became King of England
(1066) he took title to all the land and apportioned it to his
supporters and the church. Henry 1 (William's son) introduced a law
regarding 'king's peace' which gave him jurisdiction over
criminal offences including arson, murder and most crimes of violence.

Under this law, crimes were no longer an injury against the victim
and the community but an injury against the king and the fines and
compensation went to fill the king's treasury. Thus ended the age
of the victim, to be replaced by the age of the state. From this point
forward criminal justice emphasises control through punishment designed
to deter, incapacitate or reform criminals. If victims wanted to recover
their losses then they were obliged to sue in the civil courts (Van
Ness, 1986, p.66).

Retributive justice and state law

Over the years power has moved from the king to parliament but the
judicial policy has remained unchanged. Retributive justice, punishment
and prisons are the norm for treating persons guilty of crime.

Members of the public, long denied any serious debate about these
policies; now clamour for draconian laws to punish criminals, and
politicians compete with each other to pass laws to satisfy them. The
plight of the victim remains untreated; the community is ignored and the
criminal is imprisoned and removed from sight (Marzinsky, no date, p.1).

Prisons victimise the poor; they do not provide justice and they
offend against the social contract.

In following a retributive model of criminal justice based
primarily on punishment and vengeance, the world in the past two
centuries has created a monster whose pernicious effects are impacting
everywhere. Yet of all social policies, surely this is the most failed.
Never has any social system been so expensive and failed so consistently
as has the system of criminal justice and imprisonment we adhere to so
slavishly. Where has it ever worked? Never has any tax dollar been less
scrutinised for its fruitfulness than the criminal justice dollar (2)
(Consedine, 1999, p.1).

A change of focus

Today's reformers are calling for a change by moving away from
the letter of the law towards a Restorative Justice approach.

Restorative Justice is a theory of justice that emphasises
repairing the harm caused by criminal behaviour. It is best accomplished
through cooperative processes that include all stakeholders. All
activities procedures and, methods of training are measured by
Restorative Justice principles.

Restorative Justice responds to specific crimes by emphasising
recovery of the victim through redress vindication and healing as well
as recompense by the offender through reparation, fair treatment and
rehabilitation. It seeks processes through which parties are able to
discover the truth about what has happened and the harms that resulted,
to identify the injustices involved and agree on future actions to
repair those harms (Van Ness & Heerderks, 2006, p.58). The community
is involved in building its own values and the offender is brought to
understand the damage caused by his or her crime leading to apology
restitution forgiveness and reform. The duty of the state is facilitator
and executor. This process is championed by Prison Fellowship to change
prisons and assist governments to develop a more human approach to
crime, offenders and victims.

Custom law and Restorative Justice in Melanesia

The social contract

Melanesians, as hunter gatherers and later in settled villages,
developed a social contract to govern their relations with one another.
This was a common feature of all small communities and is enshrined in
Decalogue of the Bible (Deut: 5. 6-21): Thou shalt not kill, steal, lie,
commit adultery, rape or gossip.

In Melanesia there were also the social obligations of gift-giving,
mutual assistance (a village banking system), and care for the young and
old. (3) It was a system made to support the quality of life in the
community.

Melanesians followed the contract, not because they were good and
virtuous, but because without it they did not survive. Survival as the
bottom line was the measure of all cultural behaviours. Those who
provided most for survival received favoured treatment and those who
provided little received less. Women and children, as in most societies
at the time, were on the bottom of the list for favours but they had
their own ways of gaining what they wanted and were not unduly
oppressed.

House of Assembly accepts custom law

In 1973 the new Papua New Guinea House of Assembly contained a
number of educated and articulate young men who had experienced racial
discrimination, persecution by government officials and loss of
ancestral land at the hands of Western courts and they wanted reform.
(4) Reports to the Constitutional committee show the depth of their
feelings.

The price of the impact of Western colonisation has been sapping of
the initiative of our people. We seek to promote traditional ways such
as participation, consultation and consensus and a willingness of
privileged persons to boldly forgo benefits to enable those
underprivileged to have a little more. Among friends, our way of life
was to come to decisions by a long process of consultation and
consensus. This process is a central element of true democracy and
government. This is a process which is most conducive to social harmony
co-operation and common good. (Brunton and ColquhounKerr, 1984, p.21)

One of the decisions of the House of Assembly was to reintroduce
Custom Law which had been which had been replaced by state law from the
beginning of colonial control.

Some of the Australians in the administration supported the
application of Custom Law as a way of reaching out into the distant
parts of the country but there were also strong opposing voices from
jurists in Australia who thought that Custom Law meant nothing more than
payback and the customs of a thousand tribes. Their argument was that
the western system of justice had developed the laws of the land, made
by parliament and administered by the courts. They pointed out that law
based on customs had no separation of powers and no common way of
dealing with the many customs of the thousand tribes. Custom Law for its
part held that they had the customs of a thousand tribes, made by the
clans and administered by Custom Law. While the Australian jurists
wanted uniformity of laws Melanesians preferred uniformity of process.

Mediation and Restorative Justice were written into the
constitution and village courts were set up and instructed to use this
approach.

Custom Law

Custom Law was developed to administer the social contract and the
customs of the people. The small village where people all knew one
another made for a social setting of disputes familiar to all, and
access to information was easy. The power of every person involved was
properly held in balance by the power of others.

Leaders had many social obligations to others in the village and
they may have been inclined to favour them in decision-making, however
sanctions ranging from sorcery to exile constrained leaders and kept
them honest.

Under Custom Law life for the villager was usually good. It was not
a 'garden of Eden' as some would have, nor was it the hell on
earth as was believed by many missionaries and others. Three things were
a major threat to the 'gutpela sindaun'. There were the danger
of raids from enemy villages, the threat of sorcerers and arrogance of
the powerful, greedy leader who went above the law.

Custom Law was the ideal but other retributive processes were also
used. In Bougainville for instance punishments could be applied to
thieves by severing a finger (Nasioi), pressing of hands into a flaming
coconut shell (Eivo), or burning the feet of suspected sorcerers
(Trompf, 1994, p.14).

Custom Law in Bougainville

One hundred years of colonial government and western cultural ways
caused immense damage to custom and almost extinguished the knowledge
Custom Law.

Colonialism had a manifold impact on the dispute settlement
process. The most important impact was the introduction of the dispute
settlement process external to the community. This consisted of the
official courts structure for the maintenance of law and order. The kiap
(5) was the main instrument of the colonial law and order machinery.
Inside the village he had ministerial powers and settled disputes
(Paliwala, 1982, p.194).

Bougainville however was distant from the capital of PNG and was
less visited because of the constraints of money and transport both to
the island and internally. The Catholic and Methodist missions provided
most of education, medicine and communications which were normally
government duties. The result was that the damage to the existing
dispute settlement was much less in Bougainville than in areas more
under control. Thus when John Tompot, a Bougainville Custom Law
practitioner, quoted his grandfather on the process of Custom Law he was
still reasonably close to the traditional process.

The overriding philosophy of all Melanesian Custom Law (Restorative
Justice) was to bring peace, mend broken relationships and provide
satisfaction for all stakeholders so that they could get on with their
lives. It was made up of four connected processes- Consensus,
Reconciliation, Mediation and Restorative Justice. (6)

Four Custom Law processes

Consensus

Consensus is one of the survivors in Melanesian society. Even today
it is still alive and well in most villages. In the villages people
speak about any thing that brings harm to the community. Common disputes
are about gossip, sorcery, failure of fishing, a garden blight or
immoral behaviour. Talk to solve a problem continues for as long as
required, days, weeks, months or more. Often the other three processes
of Custom Law were called on the make a settlement. Decisions are open
ended and can always be called back for further talk.

Geoffrey M. White, an anthropologist working in the Solomon
Islands, reported that even bad thoughts and feelings posed a danger to
personal and community well-being if they remained hidden. Such a danger
comes in the form of illness, injury or failure of important activities
such as ceremonies, hunting and fishing. The disentangling takes two
forms; as a therapeutic activity aimed at social causes of illness or
misfortune; and as a preventative measure used to dispel bad feelings
that could interfere with collective projects such as turtle hunting.
People see disentangling as a cleansing, a moral cleansing and
instrumental means of ex-creating personal conflicts that could prove
injurious.

The disentangling puts as a symbolic seal on old wounds and
conflicts, certifies that social relations and personal
thoughts/feelings power in a state of solidarity, thereby threatening
neither self nor community. The activity has been Christianized in some
respects such as now there is the customary presence of a priest to
listen as people speak their minds (White, 1991, p.192).

Reconciliation

Reconciliation was used to deal with violent episodes in the
extended family, clan, village, tribal fight and more recently, the
civil war. The first step was to suspend fighting permanently so that
people could get on with their lives. This was followed by a meeting of
all stakeholders for a peace/reconciliation ceremony in which they
exchanged native wealth, food and pigs and expressed potent rituals of
forgiveness. Many lengthy speeches provided guarantees of an end to
hostilities and peace for all to move about freely. At this stage there
were no accusations of wrong doing and no confession of guilt for wrongs
done. Melanesian Custom Law brings together justice and forgiveness in a
unique parcel effective in healing even serious conflicts.

In Bougainville reconciliation was the main instrument for ending
the civil war. During the nineteen nineties, hundreds of reconciliations
took place throughout the island to bring peace to the damaged
communities.

Reconciliations were often repeated after intervals of one, two or
five years to confirm the treaty and at one such gathering, there could
be a confession of guilt and a promise of restitution to the bereaved
family.

Reconciliation is a unique element of Custom Law in which
forgiveness and justice come together. People I spoke to did not seem to
feel that it was a virtuous act. They saw it as a necessary act of will
for getting on with life rather than something emotional (Howley, 2002,
pp.102-118).

State law has no equivalent to this and attitudes in the Western
world are so different that people used to the Westminster system have
problems of acceptance because it contains neither sanctions nor
punishments. In the West forgiveness is not highly regarded and justice
has often come to mean punishment and legalised vengeance-payback handed
out by the court instead of the victim.

Mediation

Melanesian mediation accepted the general Restorative Justice aim
which is to mend broken relationships and bring peace to the community.
Although it is said that Melanesians did not differentiate between civil
and criminal offences, in fact mediation was used for civil matters such
as land and property disputes; Restorative Justice was for criminal
matters.

Working in Bougainville Peace Foundation, trainers found that it
was necessary for the disputants to tell their stories. However stories
often varied so much that there was insufficient commonality to reach a
solution. To use the stories of the various parties as a basis for
mediation was an invitation to chaos. To avoid this problem we moved the
emphasis away from the story and concentrated on the solutions to the
problem. Even so the disputants still had to tell their story. This was
done in the preliminary meeting when the mediator met each group
separately. The story was again told briefly by the mediator. Then the
meeting could move on to the solutions that the stakeholders could agree
on and come to an eventual win-win solution.

A well managed Melanesian mediation is more likely to look forward
to the possibilities of a mutually satisfying decision so that both
parties get something and can come away satisfied with the result. Court
administered decisions on land disputes in Melanesia have had a
difficult history because they are based on the story and evidence. They
do not have the latitude to settle for a win-win solution and a mutually
acceptable solution.

Restoring after crime (Restorative Justice)

Melanesians recognised that complete redress for crime was not
possible in their small communities. To deal with this problem, Custom
Law provided a ritual punishment to replace the feud of killing and
payback. It involved all stakeholders: the extended families of the
victim, the offender and the community.

The family of the victim and the community confronted the offender
with the harm he had done by his criminal behaviour. This invariably caused shame to the offender. (7) He was called on to accept
responsibility for his behaviour and to offer an apology and restitution
to the family of the victim. The family of the victim then set the
amount of the restitution in native wealth. After they had accepted the
apology, the families organised a ceremony of forgiveness and
reconciliation at which the offender was restored to the community.
Where necessary, the extended family were required to provide parole
against future offensive acts.

The psychological impact of facing the offender with his behaviour
and requiring that he accept responsibility for the suffering
experienced, cleansed much of the trauma suffered by the victim and
carried a powerful therapeutic effect. While Restorative Justice and a
ritual punishment was the ideal, in some Melanesian communities
Restorative Justice included retribution, expulsion from the community,
exile or even execution (8) (Howley, 2002, p.122 & pp. 1245).
Occasionally people in the Western world ask how people with no vision
of Jesus Christ could attain such as model of justice and forgiveness.
There is no need for God was there first.

Peace Foundation Melanesia

The Foundation for Law, Order and Justice was founded by Bernard
Narokobi, the then Minister for Justice (1989), to make a study of the
growing lawlessness in Port Moresby. In 1993 it added a Conflict
Resolution branch to its other activities. The civil war in Bougainville
was already three years old and Peace Foundation Melanesia was invited
to Bougainville by the Interim Government in 1994. The Foundation for
Law, Order and Justice was a very effective instrument in making the
required study and providing advice but when funding from the Department
of Village Services was withdrawn in 1995 it folded through lack of
funds.

By 1995 Restorative Justice training had been progressing in
Bougainville for more than a year, so the new Director, Pat Howley,
reregistered the foundation under a new name, Peace Foundation Melanesia
and went hunting for funds to continue work in Bougainville. Conflict
Training began with village people and the response was so popular that
a decision was made to train trainers.

At the first Training of Trainers course John Tompot, a minor chief
from a hamlet in Siwai, reported that he had been doing conflict
resolution himself. He explained that he was able to remember the
stories of his grandfather who was a noted peace maker and he had
applied his knowledge to the situation. He related how he had been
called on to deal with the murder of a civilian in a nearby village (9).
He explained how he had called on the family of the victim to tell of
their hurt and loss. When they had done so, the community were invited
to speak and finally the victim was called on to speak. Shamed and
repentant the young men apologised, offered apology and restitution.
This was accepted by the family of the victim who set the restitution in
lengths of shell money and asked for a reconciliation feast at which
four trees would be planted to represent the dead boy and those who had
killed him.

Bougainville had returned to its traditional process of Restorative
Justice to deal with the lawlessness of civil war. This method was not a
recent development, for it had had been used for thousands of years.

The Restorative Justice model provided by John Tompot was accepted
as the most suitable model for training and over the next three years
manuals were rewritten, new trainers trained and courses carried into
the villages. Writing seven years later Volker and Garasu (2004,
p.574)were able to say;

Special mention should also be made of the Peace Foundation
Melanesia, whose members worked for peace in Bougainville even in
times of the fiercest warfare (10). At the core of the Foundation's
activities are workshops to train grassroots people as mediators in
conflicts at the local level. Peace Foundation Melanesia managed to
train a total of 160 trainers between 1994 and 2000. They in turn
helped to conduct 250 mediation courses for a total of more than
6,400 participants. As with the healing-of-memories seminars these
courses of Peace Foundation Melanesia did not introduce fixed,
external, modern Western-style concepts of conflict resolution into
the Bougainvillean environment, but built upon the customary
indigenous experiences.

Phillip Miller who lived in the bush with his community development
team said of the trainers.

The real heroes of the work of Peace Foundation Melanesia were the
trainers and participants who worked in all kinds of weather and
sometimes in risk of their lives. They represent different
Christian denominations and indigenous religions, and the full
range of positions within communities. They are all subsistence
farmers and their part time remuneration from Peace Foundation was
barely enough to cover their food. I have seen trainers heading off
into the mountains in pouring rain with an eight hour trip ahead of
them and wondered what motivated them. They were the people whose
sacrifice made the difference. (Miller, 2002, p.5)

The peace process was the work of many people

Mothers went into the bush to attempt to bring their sons home.
Moreover, women's groups and individual women leaders also became
important players in the political arena. They organized peace marches,
peace vigils, peace petitions and prayer meetings for peace, thus
putting pressure on the male leaders of the warring parties (Volker et
al., 2004, p.573).

Three features of the Peace Foundation Melanesia's work have
made it different from other NGOs. First, it is very much a grassroots
organization. Second, it provides a skill rather than a service or
product. Its goal is to help Bougainvilleans learn to help their
communities resolve disputes, not to do that work itself. Third, its
training stimulates participants to think of solutions and approaches by
posing questions and using small groups to work on answers. The trainer
is a facilitator, not a lecturer bringing in outside and (therefore)
foreign ideas. All three of these features underscore a key message of
Peace Foundation Melanesia: Bougainvilleans are able to build peace
among them. I take great pleasure in presenting the 2007 International
Prize for Restorative Justice to Peace Foundation Melanesia for its work
in Bougainville. (Van Ness, 2007)

Even now the work continues

The Catholic Church is the largest denomination in Bougainville and
each year the Priest responsible for assisting youth holds a convention
in one of the larger villages. In 2007, the April convention in Arawa
proposed the idea of carrying a reconciliation cross because there were
still people in the villages in need of reconciliation. These were those
who had missed out on previous reconciliations and whose acts of murder,
rape or arson had never been forgiven. As a result they had been
estranged from their families even though they lived in the same
village.

In April 2007 the cross began its journey from Buka followed by a
thousand youths who had experienced the crisis either as fighters,
victims or even children traumatised by the fighting. At each village
the cross stopped for prayers and people in need of reconciliation came
forward and went through a ceremony of reconciliation with those whom
they had offended, exchanging buai (betel nut), offering restitution and
being forgiven. For some this was too much and they held back but when
the cross was ready to move on the next day the leaders would declare
the cross stuck until the final reconciliations had been completed.

There are many more villages waiting for the cross and its work
will not be done until the villagers are reconciled.

References

Brunton, B. & Colquhoun-Kerr, D. 1984, The Annotated
Constitution of Papua New Guinea, Papua New Guinea Ways, University of
Papua New Guinea Press.

(1) Programs offered--Training national leaders; Faith based
prisons. Communities for Restoration, Angle tree for Children of
prisoners; Sycamore tree for reconciling victims and offenders-; Centre
for justice and reconciliation for advice on extending Restorative
Justice to governments and others.

(2) Father Jim Consedine--Prison Chaplain and National
Co-coordinator, Restorative Justice Network, New Zealand.

(3) There is no altruism. People openly regard each other as
sources of mutually beneficial goods and services. The rule of
reciprocity is the where the mutual obligations entailed via
relationships are observed, each party will derive advantages from the
other. (Lawrewnce. 1969, p29)

(4) The law was.... specific, made numerous distinctions between
the white and the black. It not only deprived us of our land, but forced
us to work for the expatriate plantation owners to whom the law gave our
lands. (Kaputin Minister for Justice. 1975 p.21)

(5) The German word 'kiap' was the equivalent of the
Australian Patrol officer.

(6) The names given here are as close as we can get to the
dictionary definition for custom processes but still do not fit the
Melanesian understanding of these processes.

(7) ... of the forces are built into New Guinea society for the
prevention of wrong action the most obvious is social isolation, public
opinion, criticism, shame and the most important. (Lawrence 1969 26)

(8) During the civil war there were occasions when a fighter became
completely intractable. If warnings failed the chiefs would meet and if
agreed they would instruct the relatives to 'take him hunting'

(9) During the civil war there was an unspoken agreement that
civilians were not to be harmed. However there were some caught in the
crossfire, some tortured by the criminals and some killed on suspicion
of being spies.

(10) Three Peace Foundation Melanesia trainers Tony Kasia, Tony
Kaima and Angelina Nuguitu paid for their devotion to duty with their
lives when they were shot as spies by the BRA and Resistance.

Pat Howley is a member of the Marist teaching order and a lecturer
at Divine Word University. He has spent more than forty years in Papua
New Guinea as teacher and Headmaster at St Xavier's, Principal of
Passam National High School and Director of Student Affairs at Divine
Word Institute.

More recently he has become a trainer in Conflict Resolution with a
non-government organisation, Peace Foundation Melanesia. Working as
field officer, he set up training in Mediation and Restorative Justice
in squatter settlements around Port Moresby, and trained trainers to
extend the work. Further training was carried out for Corrective
Institute in jails around the PNG, with Police, the village people of
Lakakamu in the Gulf and people in West Tauraka (Lae)

In 1994, when he was called to conduct conflict resolution training
in Bougainville, he learned about custom law and restorative justice and
the way that Melanesians had practiced it for thousands of years. After
seven years he returned to Australia to write a book Breaking Spears and
Mending Hearts, the story of peace makers who worked and risked their
lives to bring closure, forgiveness and reconciliation and bring to an
end to the Civil war. Pat Howley has been called on to speak at a
variety of conferences both in PNG and overseas on the matter of Custom
Law and restorative justice. He is also the author of a number of
published works on the topic.

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